EWING — Railroad company CSX is seeking permission to decommission a 1.67-mile stretch of rail line and deed a small portion of it over to the Christina Seix Academy for use as an access road.

CSX applied earlier this month to the federal Surface Transportation Board to officially abandon part of an old rail line in Ewing. CSX may use part of the line in the future but a 0.29-mile piece of its property would be transferred over to Christina Seix Academy to increase access in and out of the private school, which just opened in September.

The school has one exit and entrance off Stuyvesant Avenue and could use another point to get in and out of the school, head of school Rob Connor said.

“We do not have any grand plans,” he said. “It’s about connecting two spaces so that we can at some point get vehicles across the train tracks in an efficient way.”

The school would use a 100-foot right-of-way to connect its campus with Lexington Avenue, a cul-de-sac the academy backs up on. The small driveway could provide access to staff, grounds crews and emergency vehicles, he said.

“This is literally to help us with large vehicles that sometimes have to get on campus,” Connor said. “We don’t expect a lot of traffic.”

Last January, a fire ignited in one of the under-construction buildings on the school’s 64-acre lot, badly damaging the roof of the school’s central building.

Director of finance and operations Tom Bonner said the school would eventually buy the right of way from CSX. A portion of the railroad’s right of way was encroached on years ago to build the residential development behind the school and rail ties were removed long ago from several stretches of track, he said.

If approved to transfer the line, CSX would remove any remaining rail ties before handing the property over to the academy.

“There’s a substantial length of the right-of-way that has no tracks,” Bonner said. “The rail ties are ripped up and left there, there’s trees growing out of them.”

The school is waiting on CSX to receive federal approval before moving forward with the land swap, he said. CSX did not respond to a request for comment.

“We approached them a long time ago with interest and they’re still working through their procedures,” Bonner said.